>>The point is, there's a strong market for developers at the $50/hr range as a job shop body, which translates to $100K/annum if you can work 2K hours/year at that rate.
>
>I assume you're talking about contract positions, if so you're correct. But contract position usually does not include benefit such as health insurance and other perks. I've done lots of COBOL before 2000, working on Y2K as a contractor and I always had to do my on health insurance thing for me and my family and it's not cheap.

Andy,

In my mind, in order to command that level of salary you need to bring more than good technical skills to the table. You really need to be able to make upper management level types of decisions. Additionally, I'd think you also need to be able to be very proficient at design, including a good grasp of the theories as well - or at least enough on-the-ground experience to give you the kind of good judgement needed to avoid the common pitfalls, the most common of which I'd think would be a lack of design-thought with respect to the long term growth and scalability of your application. IOW, you need to be a real pro, not a paper pro.

Also, I think you need to have a keen grasp of the nature of business. I know a lot of technologists who care more for their technology than being of service to the people they work for, whether as a W2 or a 1099.

IMO that level of salary is not at all out of line if you have the required 'pieces'.

I think though that you need to break into management in most cases to break 6 figures. There are exceptions but they really are pretty rare.